I read the e-mail about the moth eaten appearance of the
spine and the
possibility of osteosarcoma, chordoma, or bone tumor. What
are the early
symptoms of those diseases? What is osteosarcoma? My Tom
has been poorly
for about 4 weeks now and is off his legs, he's very
unstable on his legs
and staggers around, falls over cables (like the vacuum
cleaner cable) and
finds it very hard to go down stairs, he does that by
putting his front feet
down on the step first and then he swings his back end round
onto the step
that his front feet are on. Sometimes he looks like he's in
pain, then he
plays again. Yesterday he could barely use his hind legs,
then later on he
was playing again (as good as he can). First we thought it
was due to an
ear infection but he never got better although the ears are
alright now. My
vet felt his spine on Tuesday and she got to a point
(approx. 1/2 to 2/3
down his spine) where Tom reacted to her pressing a point on
the spine like
he was in pain or found it uncomfortable. I'm just
wondering what it could
be, my vet isn't sure whether an x-ray would show anything,
so far Tom has
been put on Rimadyl to see whether that'll make any
difference, so far it
hasn't. My vet tested him by straightening his back legs so
his feet were
stretched backwards so the upside of his toes was on the
table and Tom
didn't seem to realise what was going on and didn't pick his
feet up to put
them down properly. He did with his front legs though. And
my vet pinched
between his toes and he did feel that.

I'm just scared that it's something bad that can't be fixed
and that Tom
will get worse and worse to the point where he'll need to be
put to sleep
and I'm not ready to loose him, he's one of my favourite
ferrets, he and
Jack are my special ones... Should I ask my vet to do
another x-ray? He'd
had an abdominal x-ray concentrating on his bladder and my
vet looked at it
and couldn't see anything wrong with the spine but did say
that it's not
focused on the spine but she's not sure whether an x-ray
would show
anything...